Green Monster (17 page)

“You know what I mean. There are steroid rumors about Miranda. The cops must be looking at the place.”

“Our federal courts guy says the government has been trying to nail Laswell for a couple of years now. Nothing yet.”

“What's the place like?”

“Big, cushy, pimped out with all the newest machines, crawling with muscle-bound creeps.”

“Is there a Roy Laswell?”

“Yeah—unless it's some guy playing Laswell in their ads.”

“Thanks.”

Sam snapped the phone shut and told Heather they were leaving. She nodded, stood up and put the popcorn box on the concrete in front of her seat. They squeezed past a couple of schoolgirls waving signs at the TV cameras, and Sam glanced up at the JumboTron screen on the scoreboard to see if the girls had been selected. To his surprise, the camera was focused on Heather as she stood in the aisle, hand-combing her short blond hair, her elbows up in the air and her breasts bouncing slightly against her white cotton tank-top. The teenage girls next to them started yelling at Heather to move, and stuck their signs up in front of her. When Heather glanced up at the screen and realized what was going on, she laughed.

“You're blowing our cover,” Sam said.

They walked up the aisle toward the exit.

Chapter Seventeen

It was not quite nine when they got back to the BMW, illuminated to a shiny gleam under the arc lights in the Dodger parking lot. Sam slid in behind the wheel before Heather could and held out his hand for the keys. Heather shrugged and handed them over.

Sam called directory assistance on his phone and got the number for Laswell's Gym. The gum-chewing girl who answered the phone at the gym said they were open till two a.m., and once Sam deciphered her Valley Girl accent, the directions weren't hard to follow: Pick up the Golden State Freeway just north of the stadium, go north on the Glendale Freeway, and exit on Colorado Boulevard.

He found the game on the radio. The Dodgers were now up by three in the bottom of the sixth. According to Vin Scully, Alberto Miranda had just hit a two-run homer to pad the lead—and a steady stream of cars was already leaving the lot. Dodger fans were famous for leading all of major league baseball when it came to beating the traffic home. Scully went through the American League scores. The Sox had beaten the Blue Jays for the third straight game, while the Yankees lost to the Orioles again. It looked like the Sox were crawling back into the A.L. East race.

The drive to Laswell's took about fifteen minutes. On the way, Sam told Heather about Daly's description of the gym. He assumed Laswell would be a character similar to Kenny, the owner of Club Earache—tightly wound and protective of his famous clientele. Sam told her they would tour the gym as prospective customers, and see if they could strike up conversations with some of the regulars.

The gym was on a wide commercial street where hot cars cruised back and forth, the drivers looking for excitement in the sultry coastal darkness. Sam parked in the gym's adjoining lot, and they walked in to find a brightly lit, spacious main exercise room decorated primarily in blue with orange and yellow accents, with unseen fans forcing fresh air currents through the dense aroma of sweat and body oil. There were both free weights and resistance machines near the main entrance, with stair-climbers, treadmills, and elliptical machines farther back. Apparently Roy Laswell thought it was good advertising to put the oil-slicked hardbodies out front, and let the blubbery treadmill types slave away in the farther reaches of the big room.

Sam went to the reception desk and spoke to a young woman who wore a plastic nametag that said “Kaylee.” She was thumbing through a Muscle & Fitness magazine. She had teased-up hair and wore a blue sleeveless workout suit—calculated to show off the definition in her biceps—that matched her eye shadow. When Sam said hello to her, she glanced up at him and revealed her yellow chewing gum when she smiled. She removed one of the ear buds attached to her MP3 player.

“My wife and I are thinking of joining. Is there someone who can give us a tour?”

“Not tonight.” Kaylee glanced at the clock by the door. “I've got to stay by the phone. The other staffers on duty are conducting classes. We do tours between nine and six o'clock. But you're welcome to look around.”

“I hear you have some pro athletes who work out here.”

“Oh, yeah. Some of the Dodgers do. A couple of Lakers and Kings. Roy's good friends with lots of them.”

“Is Roy here tonight?”

“No. You could try back tomorrow.”

“We'll just take a walk through, if that's okay.”

“Sure, whatever.”

She turned back to her magazine, and Sam scanned the room, looking for guys who appeared over-supplemented. There were several possibilities; the sounds of guttural grunts and clanking metal drew Sam's attention to the free-weight side of the room.

“Are we interested in the one-month trial membership or the half-year introductory offer, honey?” Sam asked Heather.

She gazed at a trio of rippling, sculpted specimens wearing snug singlets and broad leather belts spotting for each other at a weight bench, then reached over and squeezed Sam's right bicep.

“I think you'd better sign up for the full year,” she said.

“Hey, easy,” Sam said. “Or I might not step in the next time you get manhandled.”

“Handle this,” she said. She grabbed his crotch.

One of the weightlifters happened to catch Heather's quick strike and broke into a leering grin.

“We interrupting something?” the guy asked.

“She's just doing some weightlifting,” Sam said.

The three lifters didn't even smile. Sam walked over and sat next to the weight bench where two of the men were spotting for the third. One appeared to be Hispanic, while the other two were white guys with short, buzz haircuts that revealed scars on their scalps, the kind most often acquired from a broken bottle in a bar fight. None of them was particularly big, but their muscles were. Heather might have been impressed, but to Sam, they looked like normal guys wearing fake plastic muscle suits—except that the veins and the bulges were real.

There was a terraced rack of round free weights next to the bench, and another low rack of dumbbells against the mirrored wall. The guy on his back looked to be benching 300 pounds.

“We're thinking of joining the gym,” Sam said. “You guys like it here?”

“Yeah, it's okay,” one of the spotters said. “Membership fee's not bad. They keep the equipment up to date.”

“Some of the pros work out here, I hear,” Sam said.

“Yeah, a few.”

“Some Dodgers?”

“Yeah, they come in.”

“How about Alberto Miranda?”

“Yeah, he's in here a lot in the off-season.”

“You guys know him?”

One of the spotters turned to the other and gave him a look. His companion looked back at Sam and said, “Yeah, we know him.”

They didn't seem to want to continue the conversation. “You guys get like that just lifting weights?” Sam asked.

“What do you mean?” one of the spotters said. The guy on his back set the barbell down in its holder and swung himself to a sitting position. He didn't look friendly.

“Oh, you know,” Sam said. “What about those supplements? Creatine, HGH, steroids—“

“Hey, FUCK you!” the weightlifter said. He pushed Sam backward hard enough to make him nearly fall off the weight bench he was sitting on. Sam got to his feet, looking for something to defend himself with as the three bodybuilders advanced toward him, but Heather stepped in front of him.

“Cool it, guys, okay?” she said. “He didn't mean anything.”

“Nobody comes into our gym and tells us we're on juice,” said the Hispanic-looking weightlifter. “Get the fuck outta here.”

“Nice friendly place you got here,” Sam said. He wasn't ready to back away.

A door banged open at the back of the gym. An older man with a shaved head and a gray Fu Manchu moustache, wearing a black tank-top and black running pants, walked as quickly as he could past the exercise machines to the weight area where Sam and Heather were being confronted by the Bash Brothers. The man's hands were balled into fists, and his angry gaze bounced back and forth between Sam and the lifters. Sam tried not to laugh; the man had muscles, but his skin hung loosely on his neck, and his shoulders and biceps had the surface consistency of oatmeal. He must have been on the cover of magazines when he was forty years younger, but now he looked like one of those tabloid photos of an aging, sagging movie star caught sunbathing.

“I told you guys I don't want no more fights in here,” the man said to the trio of lifters. “I'm sick of this shit. What's goin' on here, Jesus?”

“Sorry, Roy,” the Hispanic bodybuilder said. “But this dickhead here started asking us about steroids. I ain't gotta listen to that bullshit.”

Roy turned to Sam and said, “What's your problem?”

“No problem,” Sam said. “I take it you're Roy Laswell?”

“Yeah—so what?”

“The receptionist told us you weren't here tonight.”

“Maybe I came in when she wasn't lookin'. Now, what the fuck do you want?”

What did Sam want? His cop instinct was to suggest they go back and talk in Roy's office—but then what? Sam would ask him if Alberto Miranda had gotten steroids from anyone connected with Laswell's gym, and he knew damn well what the answer would be. The Three Stooges would be asked to escort Sam to the curb. He'd already lost some face with Heather, and he couldn't see the wisdom in pushing things to a point where he'd have to bounce his fist off one of these rock-hard goons to maintain his dignity. That was the problem with being in private practice: Everybody else had people. Kenny had three guys, Mink had two guys, and now Laswell had three guys. Sam had Heather. Heather had her own talents, but they weren't of much use here.

“Look, I'm sorry, Mr. Laswell,” Sam said. “We were just checking the place out to see if we wanted to join. Maybe I was out of line. You read so much about bodybuilding supplements, so I just asked a question.”

“My husband's an idiot,” Heather said. She shook her head with a slight eye-roll. “He says the first thing that pops into his mouth.”

Laswell was looking steadily at Sam, using whatever remaining brainpower he had, mixed with whatever muscle-growth cocktails he was downing, to try to get a fix on him.

“I don't think this guy's no idiot,” Laswell said. “I think he's an asshole. I want you both outta here—now. And don't come back.”

“Fine with me,” Sam said. He took Heather by the elbow. “Let's try Bally's.”

They walked back toward the door, the entire gym having gone silent to watch the owner quell the disturbance.

“Bye now,” Kaylee said with a wave—looking up from her magazine with her ear buds back in place—as Sam and Heather passed her desk.

Back at the BMW, Sam leaned against the driver's side door with his hands on the car's finish and his chin nearly touching the buttons of his golf shirt. This was not going well. All he had going for him right now was the word of a crime boss that he'd help find Babe Ruth. Miranda had given them nothing, and the trip to the gym had nearly turned into a disaster, except to establish that there were some hair-trigger steroid cases pumping iron in the same health club where Alberto Miranda worked out—and that he'd needed Heather to jump in to save him from a beating.

He hated himself for his next thought. Hated himself, but at this point, with the hours slipping by and Babe Ruth no closer to surfacing, Sam had no choice. Miranda was still the key to the whole thing—the only one who knew for sure what had happened, or not happened, during the World Series. They had to get to him again—and this time, he had to talk.

“Heather…” Sam said, not knowing exactly how he was going to phrase his request.

“Quiet,” she said. “I'm calling him.”

She was sitting in the passenger seat of the convertible, her cell phone to her ear and a hand up to keep Sam from saying anything more.

“Calling who?”

“Alberto. Shhh, it's ringing.”

“Where'd you get his number?”

She looked at him with an expression that said, “Are you from outer space?”

Sam should have known. Miranda had done what any other millionaire pro athlete would have done after meeting a hot blonde like Heather. He got her phone number and called her later. Maybe that's why she hadn't talked to Kenwood the night before. At any rate, Heather now had Alberto Miranda's number in her call list.

“Alberto—Heather Canby,” she said with a musical lilt. “Great game tonight…Of course we were. We were sitting behind your dugout, about thirty rows up…Listen, I thought maybe we could get together tonight…No, no, Sam's just…well, you know, we work together, but…”

Sam smiled. He'd been on the verge of pimping Heather out to Miranda, and now she was doing it herself—though she certainly didn't seem offended. This was the up side of casual, recreational sex: Whatever jealousy Sam might have felt was more than compensated for by the prospect of getting some useful information out of Miranda.

“I don't know where the players' entrance is…” Heather was saying. “Oh…sure, I can find that…Will you be ready in twenty minutes? Great. See you then.”

Heather clicked off the phone and turned to Sam.

“Back to the stadium. I've got a date.”

Chapter Eighteen

Vin Scully was wrapping up the post-game show after the 7-2 Dodger victory when Sam and Heather got back to the stadium. The lights of downtown Los Angeles burned brightly to the south as they drove around the ballpark, until they found a section of the lot where several dozen luxury cars were clustered together under the watchful eye of a couple of security cops. Sam recognized Miranda's Jaguar, with the California vanity plate “AM 19”—his initials and uniform number.

Several dozen autograph seekers and baseball groupies clustered along a metal barrier near the clubhouse door, waiting for the players to emerge. Sam stopped the BMW and turned to Heather.

“We've got to get him to talk—tonight,” Sam said.

“I know. It might take a while, though. I've got to earn his trust.”

She looked at Sam with the same knowing expression he'd seen the first time they'd met in Kenwood's office. She wasn't going to tell him what she was prepared to do. She didn't have to.

“I'm going to follow you,” Sam said. “I'll keep out of sight, but I'll be nearby, wherever you go.”

“Why? I'll be all right.”

“I know, but I haven't got anything better to do. If you learn anything, we can move on it right away.”

“I might not be done until morning.”

“Fine. Just don't turn it into brunch and a matinee.”

Heather got out of the car and walked over to the group of fans waiting along the barrier by the players' entrance. The kids waiting for autographs didn't pay much attention, but the waiting women looked at Heather as though she'd just walked into their kitchen and taken the roast they'd set out for dinner.

Ten minutes later, Alberto Miranda came out, wearing brown tailored slacks and a cream-colored Tommy Bahama sport shirt. The fans clamored for him to come over to the barrier, waving programs, baseball cards and notebooks for him to sign. He worked his way down the barrier, signing, unsmiling but dutiful. When he spotted Heather, he broke into a grin. He gestured for her to walk around to a gate where a guard let her through. He put an arm around Heather's waist and walked her to his Jag, disappointing dozens of young women who'd waited around after the game, hoping for the same invitation. While the autograph hunters turned their attention to other players who'd come out of the locker room, Miranda's sleek sports car sped off toward the limitless possibilities of L.A.

Sam put the BMW in gear and followed at a distance. A red BMW convertible wasn't the ideal car for a tail, but it wouldn't stand out all that much in L.A. And Miranda had no reason to think he was being followed.

Sam followed Miranda south on the Pasadena Freeway and stayed with him when he exited west onto the Santa Monica Freeway, headed toward the ocean. Traffic was not as constipated as in the daytime, so Sam could stay several hundred feet behind Miranda without worrying about losing him.

He dialed up Don Henley's “Boys of Summer” on the iPod. He'd always wanted to drive in L.A. with the top down, listening to that insistent synth riff, Mike Campbell's ominous guitar fills swooping like a pack of malevolent seagulls, and those desperate lyrics about a dying summer love—with a title borrowed from a book about the Brooklyn Dodgers, which in turn was borrowed from some famous poem…who wrote that? Yeats? Keats? Dylan Thomas? Tennyson? He should have paid more attention to his English poets in school, and less time studying batting averages and chord progressions.

Sam figured he was one of many men cruising the L.A. freeways listening to the same song that night, and thinking the same vaguely paranoid thoughts about a woman—it was a Southern California cliché, for sure. But he didn't care.

Some guys could sustain a sexual relationship with a woman without getting the least bit involved, but Sam wasn't that kind of man. His thoughts bounced back and forth between Caroline and Heather. Don't look back, the song advised. He'd agreed that a cooling-off period was the right thing to do when Caroline went back to Tucson. But what did that mean? There were no rules. No advice, either. Don't look back…he could see both of them, feel them, smell them…never look back…Heather's shiny blond hair and hard-eyed focus on what she wanted…Caroline's dark, silky hair and her optimistic, I-can-get-through-anything smile…summer was coming to an end, even here in Los Angeles…

Heather…Caroline…Kenwood…Miranda…don't look back…

Miranda's car was nearing La Brea when Sam's cell phone rang. The guitar riff continued to peck in the background as Sam opened his phone. It had to be either Daly or Mink.

“This Skarda?” he heard an unfamiliar voice ask.

“Yeah. Who's this?”

“Sid wants to meet with you. Tonight.”

“Where?” Sam asked. He kept his eyes on Miranda's tail lights. He wasn't sure he wanted to leave Heather on her own—she might get something out of Miranda sooner than later, considering how effective she could be with men who enjoyed sensational blondes. And what man doesn't? Yet Mink was just as likely to give him some vital information—and you don't refuse offers from the Sid Minks of the world.

The voice on the phone—it sounded like Mink's tough-guy companion Joey Icebox—gave Sam directions to a Mexican restaurant called Dos Mujeres in Inglewood. Then he hung up.

Sam exited on La Brea and headed south. Heather wouldn't know that he had stopped following her, or why, but she could take care of herself. Obviously.

Dos Mujeres was located a couple of blocks past the Hollywood Park racetrack and casino on West Century Boulevard. Driving by, Sam glanced at the casino, a newer building with a soft pink four-story façade and a metallic art-deco rotunda that extended over the circular driveway to a lighted waterfall facing the street. Airplane noise from LAX completed the area's ambiance of hustle and edgy commotion.

Sam pulled into the parking lot at Dos Mujeres and found a spot near the front door. He locked his gun in the trunk of the car, knowing Joey would just pat him down again anyway. He thought about putting the top up on the convertible, but there was nothing in it worth stealing, after he unplugged his iPod from the car stereo and put it in his jacket pocket.

A black Cadillac pulled into the lot and stopped in front of the entrance. Joey Icebox jumped out of the car, followed by Leon with his Clooney haircut. They scanned the parking lot with the self-importance of a couple of Secret Service agents. Joey noticed Sam and nodded to him. Then Mink struggled out of the back seat, having exchanged his Dodgers jacket for a huge, ill-fitting brown sport coat. He had a lit cigar in his hand, but when he reached the steps of the restaurant, he tapped the ashes of the cigar and ground it into a wooden pillar just below the NO SMOKING sign. Then he put it back in his mouth and walked through the door that Leon held open for him. Joey gestured at Sam to follow them. In the vestibule, Joey did another quick frisk on Sam, then motioned for him to go in ahead of him.

The sound system was playing contemporary Latin pop, with drum machines and synthesizers instead of accordions and trumpets. The decor was the typical potted ferns with colored Mexican blankets hanging from stucco interior walls. Substitute red checkered tablecloths for the chips and salsa, Chianti for the Dos Equis, and Dean Martin music for Selena, and Dos Mujeres would be the classic mob hangout. Sam didn't have any urgent desire to be wearing his gun, but he didn't know much about organized crime in L.A., either. Maybe gangsters here were as relaxed as the city they controlled; maybe not. Sam couldn't shake the feeling that Mink was as much Hollywood as he was Mob; that he and his boys had never missed an episode of “The Sopranos,” and had “The Godfather” memorized line by line.

“Good evening, Mr. Mink,” the ruffled-shirted host in the lobby said. He sounded nervous. “We weren't expecting you.”

“I got a whim,” Mink said with a shrug. “The usual table, Jorge.”

He pronounced it hor-GAY, letting the emphasis linger purposely on the second syllable. The host did not correct him.

Jorge led them through the restaurant to a booth in the corner that was occupied by a man and woman with three young children. Their food had just been served, and the woman was trying to calm one of the kids, who didn't like the looks of his plate of rice and beans.

“We'll need to find you folks another table,” Jorge said to the couple.

“What the hell,” the man said. He looked behind Jorge to see Mink and his men waiting impatiently. “I didn't see a ‘Reserved' sign on this table.”

“Oh, sorry,” Joey said. He reached into his sport jacket. “Here it is.”

He pulled out a Smith & Wesson semi-automatic and laid it in the middle of the table. Without another word, the man grabbed two of the kids by the arms and pulled them out of the booth. The woman picked up the youngest one and followed her husband without making eye contact with Mink or his goons. The youngest child stared wide-eyed back at Joey Icebox over his mother's shoulder, and Joey stuck out his tongue. The little boy covered his eyes and screamed.

“I'll have this cleaned up right away, Mr. Mink,” Jorge said. He waved furiously at one of his busboys.

The table was wiped down and re-set in less than a minute. Sam sat next to Leon on one end of the booth, with Sid Mink in the middle and Joey on his other side, where he could keep an eye on the front door. In another minute, three plates of food appeared, and another waiter placed a drink in front of Mink. Each plate had a different entree; Mink's was three large enchiladas, a stuffed burrito, and sides of refried beans, rice, and pico de gallo; Joey Icebox had a chimichanga; and Leon had three tacos. One of the waiters asked Sam if he was going to order, but Sam waved him off. His stomach wasn't in the receiving mood for Mexican food.

Mink put a few hasty, ungraceful forkfuls of food in his mouth, had several sips from his drink, then returned to his dinner plate and finished it off before speaking to Sam. He pushed his empty plate away and chewed on his unlit cigar.

“You sure you don't want anything, Skarda?” Mink asked.

“No thanks.”

“Get him a drink, Leon.”

Sam wasn't going to argue: “Dos Equis.”

Mink leaned toward Sam and spoke softly. His breath smelled of cigars, whiskey, and cilantro. Not all that unpleasant, really.

“The guy you're looking for is a Spic hustler named Frankie Navarro.”

“How do you know?”

Mink looked at Joey, then at Leon.

“How do I know, he asks. I got people everywhere. Take it to the bank, pal—Navarro's behind this. He's been nipping around the edges of my business for a while now. A bookie here, a drug dealer there. Nothing to make me mad enough to do something about it. It's a big town. He likes to pump iron, thinks he's a tough guy. I hear he was in a couple of movies. But he's a dumb punk who's way over his head on this one.”

Mink put the cigar in his mouth and worked it around like a lozenge, waiting for Sam to ask more questions. Sam had a dozen of them, but he wasn't sure which one to ask first. The most obvious one was why Mink was bothering to tell him. Sid Mink's say-so might be reliable, but it didn't get Sam any closer to proving anything, or stopping it. It had to be in Mink's interest, as well as Louis Kenwood's, to terminate the extortion plot—and he'd have to help—but Sam wanted to hear Mink say it.

“What are we going to do about it?” Sam asked. He stared coolly at Mink, though he didn't feel cool. He was about as far out of his comfort zone as he could get, talking to mobsters in a strange town about a rival mobster.

“We?” Mink said. “When did you become one of my guys?”

“I can't wait for you to clean this up,” Sam said. “My job is to tell Kenwood he doesn't have to worry about Babe Ruth anymore. And I have to know that it's true.”

Joey Icebox put one of his large hands over the closed fist on his other hand and rubbed his knuckles, then said, “Only one way to be sure you don't have to worry about Navarro.”

That's as far as Sam wanted to take that discussion. He couldn't be party to planning a hit, assuming these guys could pull it off. If they did, and the cops defied the odds and did something about it, Sam would go down with Mink and his boys. Mob guys loved to make everybody think they were running smooth, trouble-free organizations, but Sam knew there were always wiseguys trying to position themselves to move up, others falling out of favor, and a cop strike force trying to exploit the rivalries. For all Sam knew, Joey or Leon could be wired by the Feds, working to bring Mink down. Sam didn't have police affiliation anymore; good intentions wouldn't help him in court if he was caught on tape discussing how to eliminate a rival mobster.

“How do you know you can trust me to talk about this?” Sam asked Mink.

“We had you checked out,” Mink said with a wave of the cigar. “Didn't take long. You used to be a cop in Minneapolis. You got shot a couple years ago, went into private practice, and you've been peeping in bedroom windows for the last few months until Kenwood hired you. And somebody tried to gun you down right after that.”

“You know about the boat?”

“What boat?” Mink said. “I'm talkin' about that fucked-up drive-by in Minneapolis.”

So the kid lying in a coma back in the Twin Cities had been gunning for him, not Marcus. And that meant somebody knew Kenwood was going to hire him almost from the minute Heather called him—or even before. Navarro might not be a big-timer like Mink yet, but his reach was long; he'd found a guy in Minneapolis to try to take him out, and a guy in Boston, too. When the Minneapolis gang-banger failed, Navarro sent somebody else to shut the kid up. He didn't need to worry about the guy in the speedboat. His talking days were over.

So who was giving Navarro information? It had to be either Heather or Paul O'Brien—and Heather had had other chances to get rid of him since they left Boston. He needed that background check on Kenwood's driver.